Press Releases

ago 4, 2015

MILPITAS, Calif., August 4, 2015 – SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), a global leader in flash storage solutions, today announced it has reached agreement with SK Hynix, Inc. to modify and extend their intellectual property licensing relationship and enter into a multi-year commercial relationship under which SK Hynix will supply its leading-edge DRAM products to SanDisk. These agreements include a settlement of the trade secret misappropriation suit filed by SanDisk in 2014.

Under these agreements, which will expire on March 31, 2023, SanDisk will release SK Hynix of its liability pertaining to the trade secret litigation and license certain intellectual property rights to SK Hynix in exchange for license and royalty payments to be made over the duration of the agreement. In addition, SK Hynix has agreed to supply SanDisk with certain volumes of its DRAM products for MCP and SSD applications. The specific terms and conditions of the agreements, including with respect to economic consideration, are confidential.

“We are pleased to have reached this important settlement and to expand our commercial relationship with SK Hynix. We believe this resolution acknowledges the value of our intellectual property while providing SanDisk access to DRAM solutions desired by our customers for their mobile and SSD applications for many years to come,” said Sanjay Mehrotra, president and chief executive officer of SanDisk.

“We believe this resolution is positive for both SK Hynix and SanDisk and our customers. We look forward to this renewal and extension of our business collaboration with SanDisk,” said Dr. Sung-Wook Park, president and chief executive officer of SK Hynix.

About SanDisk

SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company, is a global leader in flash storage solutions. For more than 25 years, SanDisk has expanded the possibilities of storage, providing trusted and innovative products that have transformed the electronics industry. Today, SanDisk’s quality, state-of-the-art solutions are at the heart of many of the world's largest data centers, and embedded in advanced smart phones, tablets and PCs. SanDisk’s consumer products are available at hundreds of thousands of retail stores worldwide. For more information, visit www.sandisk.com.

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including statements about expectations regarding the benefits of the extended license agreement, including license and royalty payments under the license agreement, the expected benefits of the DRAM supply agreement and SK Hynix’s continued supply of DRAM required by Sandisk for future periods that are based on SanDisk's current expectations and involve numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate. Risks that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate include among others: SK Hynix's failure to perform its obligations under the license or supply agreement, the license and royalty payments not being made in a timely fashion or in the amounts we expect, whether the pricing terms under the supply agreement will result in cost-competitive supply of DRAM as compared to other sources, the quality and quantity of the DRAM supplied by SK Hynix may not meet our requirements, changing market and industry conditions, and the other risks detailed from time-to-time under the caption “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including, but not limited to, our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 28, 2015. All statements made in this news release are made only as of the date of this release. We undertake no obligation to update the information in this release in the event facts or circumstances change after the date of this release.